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Gamification for Engagement Across Generations

Gamification for Engagement Across Generation

It is not a rocket science to realize how people are more willing to do things they are genuinely into. This can be reached by creating a fun element into the activity, making it an engaging way to spend time. Therefore, if engaging ways to spend time is one of the keys to make people happy, then in what way can people spend their time with an engaging moment? The most powerful answer might be by playing games, and this article will elaborate why game and gamification adheres to the issue.

Playing games has a positive effect on people who play it. In addition to being a stress medication, playing games can trigger the feeling of happiness and pleasure when we are in the game until the round is over.

According to a clinical psychologist, Dr Brent Conrad, the fun element is what makes games so addictive. One of the most popular forms of the fun element is the reward that is based on a levelling system. Not only players or teams can earn in-game rewards, but also real-world rewards such as the social connection that allows players to get completely immersed and generate strong emotion.

Gamification and Millenials

Millennials—those who were born in the 1980’s to 2000’s—is the generation that proactively witnesses the technology development. This generation certainly knows how to have fun with technology and gadget, especially with games. This can be seen by the growing number of gamers around the world from a wide range of fields and genres, ranging from online games, console games, even mobile games through the use of smartphone have begun to dominate the world gaming market (with the global smartphone users are expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019 with around 2.1 billion active mobile gamers by 2017 only).

As millennials are the main workforces of today, their tech-savvy characteristic more likely to utilize gadgets more and tend to avoid the conventional way of working. The old, plain, and rigid kind of way will not get their attention, let alone engagement. This is where gamification has the potential to fill in as it has the ability to turn that conventional way of work into a fun experience.

Illustration of millennials and gadget usage. Image via pexels.com

With gamification, millennials—who are also characterized with the gadget as their newest form of staple—will be more pleased in doing what they do because it is closer to technology or applications that they have been familiar with before. Gamification is also capable of making millennials interested in a certain topic because it is delivered in a more let-loose and fun way. Hence we can get their attention and willingness to get the work done that still aligns with our instrument, but at the same time not sacrificing their desire to do things their way.

Gamification and Generations above Millenials

Then another alarming question pops: is gamification only suitable for millennials since our workforce also still consists generation them? Well, taking the example from the Generation X—who was born between 1960’s to the early 1980’s—that was untouched by advanced technology when they were growing up till only recently to use gadgets, can also benefit from gamification.

This is based on The Human Capital Edge (Pfau and Kay, 2002), they argue that the question people are often asked to enter or survive in an organization is “Is the work is going to be fulfilling and enjoyable?” Everyone wants to enjoy the work they do and the people with whom they work. They also want to derive a sense of meaning and purpose from what they do every day. And it also does not depend on the certain generation, race, or gender. Everyone in an organization wants that.

The application of gamification in an organization has the ability to form a perception of fun and enjoyable towards the activity conducted within it. Both of these perceptions can result in a high sense of loyalty to members of the organization because they feel that their journey in the organization is fun and meaningful.

Remember the childhood discourse that always becomes the foundation of pre-school and kindergarten, “learning through play”? The adagium might sound lousy and ordinary, except actually the effect of those words is amazing if we can apply them very well. With the approach to play, all knowledge and info are more easily to be absorbed than the usual plain way. Gamification becomes important because it realizes the importance of that “learning through play” adagium very well which will give a quite visible impact on the organization.

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We provide end-to-end game development of learning platform with Levio to scale up your learning program ability. Levio is a solution that transforms your learning program into a fun, bite-sized materials filled with interactive quizzes and mini-games, as well as real-time trackable and measurable result.